Doctor Who: Classic or Dud?

Paddy Russell for sure!

indeed, i don't know why "the massacre" never shows up on episodes people would like to see recovered, christ i would love to see how russell directed it

The workprint of Ghost Light on the S26 box set is quite brilliant, it actually makes sense while you're watching it.

i haven't bought any official who releases for ages... might be time for me to actually get some of these new full-season sets. of course i am grateful for all the care and effort the restoration team have put in to the stories and all the weird supplementary material they throw on... most of it i probably won't watch but i'm one of the, like, three people who does find film trims interesting.

i'm not _entirely_ sure i have a blu-ray player but i bet we have _something_ i can play them on. i still probably won't pick up s26, as interesting as a comprehensible ghost light is to me, because i'm just not a fan of that era of the show.

we just got rid of our blu-ray player, but i'd love to see the proper cuts of fenric and ghost light. they're like some lynchian puzzle that's never meant to be solved

mccoy's performance just grows and grows on me - he's such an unusual combination of very good and very bad actor. it's rare to see a performance go from extreme to extreme in the same scene - and yet he's always magical and charismatic, somehow. maybe sisko in DS9 is comparable for that weirdness

embarrassingly it turns out i don't have a blu-ray player... the last tom baker season and first davison season are temptingly priced right now (30 USD), and i'm not sure if they'll stay that way. trying to decide if i should order anyway on the theory that i'll wind up with one of those fuckers eventually.

mccoy is fascinating to me, he's so outsized, so charismatic, so completely unsuited to small-screen acting. i don't feel like the three seasons of doctor who he appeared on necessarily present him at his best. i'd really love to see some of his "vision on" work, or some of the stuff he did with ken campbell, but fuck knows if any of that stuff even exists...

I wasn't buying them but the small rerelease of S12 flashed across my radar so I jumped in. Got all those available but will have to live with S10, S18 and S19 being unattainable as I'm not going to pay £200 for them.

McCoy is not a "good" actor, and Aldred is probably actively bad. But he's a wonderful performer, their chemistry is just magical, and sincere thesping would not enhance this era in which every story has a completely different heightened non-realistic tone from every other story's completely different heightened etc.

It's probably to McCoy's benefit that the only Cartmel story without another companion in it dispatches Bonnie Langford to go and look for a swimming pool as soon as possible, and lets him get on with things by himself for 3.5 weeks.

there's a few episodes of McCoy era Vision On uploaded to youtube

also McCoy and David Rappaport as the O-Men from about 10 minutes into this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9HLOEkwZK0

the "what would make the mccoy era more watchable for me?" is an interesting one, because i don't find it watchable. i feel like a lot of it is just the technology of the times. i hate the visual aesthetic of the mccoy era and i love the visual aesthetic of the '70s. personal bias.

so no, merely putting an actor in the role in place of a hyper-kinetic stage magician like mccoy probably wouldn't improve things by itself because there's too much else going against the era.

if the uk ones are going out of print already i guess i will jump on them whether or not i have a blu-ray player. just seasons 18 and 19 as those are my favourite of the ones available right now - season 12 is of course classic but i'm a bit burned out on it.

let's see, what other seasons would i buy? 7, 13, 14 for sure. the rest honestly i'd have to think about... season 10 probably is the second-best pertwee season, but i really only like the first two stories.

oh yes, popped right up, now why could i never find that before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyWKcgmHwpo

i hate the visual aesthetic of the mccoy era and i love the visual aesthetic of the '70s. personal bias.

nah, they were basically filming on tin cans connected with string at this point. I appresh the fact that the most allusive and layered and ambitious stories were being made on an afterschool show's budget - and making four stories a year on the allowed budget for three - but they'd all be even more enjoyable with Season 14 or Series 5 production values.

i only own season 12 (tom 1) from the classic series. it's a silly show to put on blu-ray, given how shit most of it looks.

it's unsilly to put out a package with six discs and new documentaries and improved edits, that is cheaper than the previous seven packages with eleven discs total

(it's idiotic to press fewer copies than demonstrated customer demand, especially for a perennial-replacement product, but that's different people making that decision)

yeah seriously number of doctor who DVDs i own = 0, number of doctor who blu-ray packages i have purchased since finding out about them = 2, and again i do not actually own a blu-ray player, i understand one can't generalize from one data point but while i know they've resisted putting the show on blu ray for quite a long time for reasons of quality, i'm happy to able to affordably own full seasons of my favourite tv show in high quality with lavish extras. thanks to y'all who bought the dvds for basically subsidizing my getting reams of cool shit super cheap...

probably the budget for the mccoy series being unusually low has something to do with it. i'm sort of in the same place re: those episodes as the people who point out, rightly, that the animated episodes are filled with paper dolls. chief difference being that i wouldn't be surprised if the animation was redone at some point to a higher standard, at least as long as people keep caring about "fury from the deep", which isn't something that's really possible with "ghost light".

counterpoint: Ghost Light is one of the best Dr Who stories ever, whose frustrated ambition was a beacon to much of what kept Who alive through the '90s, and for which viewers' calls for a restoration have continued to increase over thirty whole years until finally fulfilled this month

while Fury From The Deep is some endless old guff about murderous seaweed that's only getting a paper doll version from Big Finish because it was sensibly taped over with billiards as soon as practical

I think the truth is probably somewhere in between.

The older I get, the more I finally realise that Sylv and (especially) Colin were just let down by their times and these days I'm as likely to put on Paradise Towers or Vengeance on Varos as I am Enemy of the World.

I am almost certain Fury is going to disappoint, because the John Cura version isn't exactly sparkling, but will buy it anyway.

i mean maybe it's a great triumph that a rough cut of "ghost light" has finally been released, and if it's basically coherent so much the better, but i can't help but note that apparently reconstructing "the urge to survive", which was taped over with billiards on account of being shit before it was even broadcast, was a higher priority. of course that was all fucking ian levine, wasn't it? maybe all of the "missing episode" mystique is a result of being ensorcelled by his malign influence and once he's finally gone for good ghost light will get its due.

i respect "ghost light", i think what the people working on doctor who those last couple years did made a big difference in allowing it to come back. i'm glad home recording technology existed by the time "ghost light" was broadcast so it didn't get taped over by billiards. i don't necessarily think marc platt is as clever as some people think he is, and i'm not fully convinced that lungbarrow contributed anything of value to "doctor who".

maybe a coherent "ghost light" would change my mind on some or all of these issues, but the likelihood is pretty low i'll ever actually see it. i'll probably watch the animated "fury from the deep" when it comes out. i might just put on the second episode of "The Underwater Menace" in the background (old Doctor Who is great to play in the background, where I can just sort of half-pay attention to it) right now. of course it's some old crap, of course people are going to forget it even existed probably sooner rather than later. it's, i don't know, comforting to me.

IMO ghost light gets worse the more coherent it is - the atmosphere is great and there are some excellent characters and clever jokes but the actual story is ridiculous and stupid.

I just rewatched The Pirate Planet and will probably have “MOONS OF MADNESS!” echoing in my head for the next week.

going through the entirety of pertwee and a) just hoovering up 70s institutional architecture, scientific-military infrastructure and heavy industrial energy plants. plus gorse. lot of gorse.

come to the conclusion that i must somehow have absorbed pertwee in a pre-natal phase and my sense of pastoral aesthetic rules are intrinsic to that.

also v much enjoying reading the Tardis Eruditorum by Elizabeth Sandifer alongside it.

also it amuses that i now work round the corner from where the shop dummies took over the world in Spearhead from Space - an event which my mum used to tell me was one that had stuck with her ever since she saw it

oh who am i kidding, i ordered seasons 10 and 12 too, fuck this whole "oh i'll be sensible and only get _some_ of them", they've only got four seasons out over here, they're all fundamentally good seasons, and they're all on sale at $30/season.

I see that one of the seven complete seasons they've released on blu is Colin Baker's second season. How random.

that's always how the release schedule has been for who; the understanding is that it'll all come out eventually as enough people will buy it (and enough people will put time in cheap) to make it worth it, that it's not practical or economically sound to put it all out at once... i mean theoretically there might be people raising a stink that "trial of a time lord" is out on blu-ray and "caves of androzani" isn't, but i can't imagine what possible rational reason there would be to do such a thing. different people like different eras of the show. some people like endless old guff about murderous seaweed, some people like incomprehensible under-budgeted parables about evolution, and some poor bastards even like some old racist bullshit. not too keen on those last folks mind, but for those of you who fall into that category season 14 is going to be out next!

maybe they did it for the germans. when germany dubbed old who into german and broadcast it it was the colin baker episodes.

I'll stick up for Trial and say that more than anything else in the Classic Series it looks like a template for a season of NuWho.

Story arc check
Deepening of Time Lord/Gallifrey lore check
Timey-wimey regeneration bollocks check
Surprise return of The Master check
Returning monster that nobody really asked for used to ill-effect check
Departure of a companion after a transformation which then gets undone check
New companion hired because of their work in the theatre check
Event finale that is too convoluted and doesn't really work check

The Mysterious Planet is genuinely good and the reveal works very well.
Mindwarp is a load of old bollocks in places and overacted terribly but at a minimum watchable.
If Vervoids was a Tom/Leela story we'd be talking about how brilliant it was.
Ultimate Foe is a product of how it was written, unfortunately.

I’ll rep for Trial. It was the first season I watched without my family in the room – I was eight – because no one else like Colin Baker. Peri stuff obviously terrifying and created a deep and well-loved psychological wound, But that was nothing compared to the shame of remaining a Doctor Who fan to schoolfriends, family etc.

Was put in mind of ToaTL recently with that Judoon Ep of the new series. Same sense of being superficially intrigued by the ideas on offer, yet ultimately disappointed and left with a sense that successfully landing these kind of "significant" revelations requires a skill that is beyond the current creative team. Say what you like about Moffat but his toying with the mythos never felt cheap and tacky (YMMV of course).

I'll stick up for Trial and say that more than anything else in the Classic Series it looks like a template for a season of NuWho.

and yet NuWho has yet to be cancelled, so clearly there can't be _that_ many similarities, no?

The Mysterious Planet is genuinely good and the reveal works very well.

it's a decent riff on "planet of the apes". i'd rank it above "the power of kroll", "the two doctors", holmes' two troughton eps... probably also "talons" because "talons" is super racist and "sunmakers" because fuck libertarianism. i'd definitely call it the best story of the season.

If Vervoids was a Tom/Leela story we'd be talking about how brilliant it was.

― Doubling down on out of date information (aldo)

like we talk about how brilliant "underworld" is?

like we talk about how brilliant "underworld" is?

I've very nearly grown to appreciate Underworld.

Actually, it's Nightmare In Eden it's most like, now I think about it.

Tom Baker's Who novel Scratchman now costs 99p on Kindle, if that interests anyone.

The Faceless Ones animation debuted at #1 on the blu-ray chart, and #6 on DVD.

One of the animators on the BBC-made adaptations has posted a six-minute timelapse of him building one of the digital sets, which he made as a DVD bonus feature but didn't get included.

(It's a signal illustration of the loving dedication of the people working on these, and the limits of their actual expertise, that he reveals an extremely nerdy easter egg near the end. A newspaper clipping is stuck to the side of a filing cabinet, addressing the events of the Hartnell story of ten months earlier that's taking place elsewhere in London at the same time as this story. However, he appears to have never actually seen a newspaper at all, let alone what one designed and printed in 1966 looked like.)

super cool, thanks for the link! i'm still working my way through the blu-ray full season sets i picked up recently; had a total hoot with the "meglos" commentary!

In other "classic" news, Who twitter did a collective rewatch of Day Of The Doctor on Saturday. Steven Moffat created an account to join in and comment along, and scripted a new intro scene in the vein of the 50th anniversary cinema screenings, filmed and edited with social distancing. During the rewatch, the top non-pandemic hashtags in the UK were Who-related (including positions 1, 2, and 4), and things like "John Hurt" were still trending worldwide hours later.

To continue the lockdown party vibes, two further viewings have been planned:

Rose this Thursday, 26th March, at 7pm GMT (noon PDT in the US) - this is the (to the minute) 15th anniversary of original transmission, and Russell T Davies is also going to join Twitter for the evening, and apparently writing something new as well.

and The Eleventh Hour on Friday 3rd April, the 10th anniversary of broadcast.

(More are likely to follow, with other "creatives" lined up to tweet commentary.)

Faceless Ones is pretty tremendous to be honest, doesn't fall foul of the standard Pat trope of circular episodes (character X in peril at end of previous, escapes at beginning, japes, ends up on same peril at the end).

Rose <-- 5 years --> The Eleventh Hour <-- 10 years --> Now feels kind of trippy.

(I am pretty sure it would not be difficult to find examples of me complaining that the first gap should have been shorter)

especially trippy because the final Capaldi / Bradley special was also ten years ago

Adorably, Emily Cook, the DWM writer who has coordinated the collective rewatches, says of the Rose watch "Hopefully it'll encourage some younger viewers to discover 2005 Doctor Who for the first time..."
"

I did the Day of the Doctor rewatch, at least later the same day & it is still a great episode

I love how both Smith & Hurt doctors tease Tennant doc about his sandshoes :D

David Tennant’s Chuck Taylors are the greatest contribution to Who garb next to Tom Baker’s scarf

https://i.imgur.com/brQpiwa.jpg

Russell:

ROSE: THE PREQUEL. ...written for Doctor Who Magazine in early 2013, to show the Eighth Doctor regenerating into the Ninth. But! The Day of the Doctor script knocked that for six, continuity-wise, so this was buried deep. Until today! It’s a glimpse of parallel events... Brand new ROSE: THE SEQUEL tonight at 7.45!

Target format at RTD's instagram

The text at BBC.co.uk

RTD's new twitter for live commentary: https://twitter.com/russelldavies63

And new from Davies: ROSE: THE SEQUEL - a v good ten-minute audiobook short story.

(Clive's website is still up, btw)

The next rewatch has been slotted in for next Monday: Vincent And The Doctor, with writer Richard Curtis and sort-of-credited secret cowriter Emma Freud tweeting along.

RTD’s behind the scenes book is a lot of fun and my lockdown toilet book of choice right now. It’s maybe his best contribution to Who outside the first season

Rewatched “Rose” tonight

God I love the way they first introduce the Doctor in this ep, no matter how many times I watch it, it’s always exciting

https://tenor.com/H3r0.gif

And Rose & Jackie are great characters from the getgo. I loved Rose from the start, the way she would maybe panic briefly & then jump right in & help. Plus: *She* saves the Doctor! In the first episode!

“lots of planets have a north”😂

https://media.giphy.com/media/RXv8rfphhNiLK/giphy.gif

Ecclestone is so handsome too
sigh
love ‘im, i do

The next rewatch has been slotted in for next Monday: Vincent And The Doctor, with writer Richard Curtis and sort-of-credited secret cowriter Emma Freud tweeting along.

Also live-tweeting: Karen Gillan, Van Gogh actor Tony Curran, and Matt Smith will be contributing via Freud as proxy. Bill Nighy has also been named as tweeting, so Freud's gonna be busy typing if she's standing in for Curtis, Smith and Nighy as well as contributing her own thoughts.